Gosnells Summer Honey Ale, a mellifluous blonde collaboration between Portobello Brewing and Gosnells Mead of Peckham, has been released across all of Portobello Brewing’s 21 Pubs.
The limited-edition recipe was developed by Portobello Brewing’s Farooq Khalid with Will Grubelnik and Tom Gosnell of Gosnells.
The newly created brew uses Oxfordshire honey with pale and wheat malt to which Styrian Goldings and an American hop related to our British Fuggle have been added. The 3.8% ale will be served solely in cask.
Tom Gosnell comments:
“We all chose to create a ‘cask’ honey beer as we not only love mead, but we love cask beer as well. We have made a few cask braggots in the past – beers usually combining cereals and more than 50% honey. These have been serious winter warmers of around 6% abv. But for this Collab, we wanted to make something a little lighter and brighter for the summer, a gently chilled mild blonde.
“Honey has an amazing ability to be both floral and fruity and, when mixed with the right malt & hop bill, you can get the best of both worlds. Honey is an amazing natural ingredient and, depending on what the bees have been eating, you get very different flavours from each honey. For this brew we chose a light floral spring golden honey from Oxfordshire. It’s got a lovely, round sweet clover flavour & big grassy notes complimented by a delicate smell of freshly picked flowers and a hedgerow herbal backbone. This depth of flavour allowed us to build a light malt bill around this, with a blend of complimentary hops to create a 3.8% light, refreshing summer honey beer.
“The mild and pleasing honey notes bring this beer alive with its herbal and fruity tones. Then the ‘mild’ and ‘amber’ barley malts combine with the wheat malt to give a golden colour, a white tan head and a firm, mouth-filling texture. The hops link to provide a woodsy floral finish.”
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July 2022
Press release from Gosnell’s Mead
Contact: rupert@randr.co.uk